Nineteen things worth doing, ranked by cost

In one paragraph. This is the most useful chapter in the report. Eleven of the open questions close with a letter, a phone call or a free download. Nothing below requires a laboratory until item 16. The numbering is unchanged from earlier versions so that references elsewhere still resolve, but the priority order has changed.

Send these first. New in this version. Action 3 now leads, ahead of actions 1 and 2. The reason is not that it matters more in principle but that it is the one whose answer changes a plan: the Decree 15 answer is expected to be unfavourable and is being sought in order to document the refusal, whereas the feed pathway answer determines the timeline of the market this report actually recommends. After that: actions 1 and 2, which travel in one envelope, then actions 4 and 5, which between them supply the two numbers the business case rests on, then action 6 and action 13.

A letter or a phone call each#

1. Write to Cục An toàn thực phẩm, the Vietnam Food Administration, in Vietnamese, and ask whether a fermentation-derived protein ingredient with no history of use in Vietnam falls under Article 4 self-declaration or Article 6 registration of Decree 15/2018. A written answer, or a documented refusal to answer, is publishable either way. This is the binding constraint on every category in this report. Closes R-G1.
2. In the same letter, ask whether an Aspergillus oryzae biomass product grown on a food-grade substrate is treated as a novel food or as a processed food under Article 4, framed around the tương precedent. If the answer is favourable, this is the fastest route to a marketable Vietnamese alternative protein product found anywhere in this study. Closes R-G3. Ask before filing any self-declaration, not after; see 7.2.
3. Write to the Department of Livestock Production under the agriculture ministry and ask how a genuinely new single raw material joins the permitted circulation list, whether khảo nghiệm, a formal trial, is required, and what it involves. Send this one first. The regulatory path for the recommended first market is undocumented in the English-language sources, and until it is answered no plan or funding application should assume a fast feed route. Closes R-G2.
4. Ask the Vietnam Cassava Association, or three starch factories directly, for pulp and peel output per tonne of fresh root, and for the gate price of wet pulp. This sizes and prices the only genuinely available feedstock in the country. Closes CF-G1 and much of CF-G2.
5. Ask two or three Vietnamese aquafeed mills for delivered prices of imported soybean meal, corn and fishmeal, and for their fishmeal inclusion rate by species. The prices are the go or no-go number for the entire feed-grade case; the inclusion rates are what the market-size correction in chapter 9 turns on, and the mills hold both. Closes CF-G4 and CF-G10.
6. Ask the four brewery groups, Sabeco, Habeco, Heineken Vietnam and Carlsberg Vietnam, for spent grain tonnage, current buyer and gate price. Brewery sustainability teams usually publish or share this. Closes CF-G11.
7. Ask Vinacas, the Vietnam Cashew Association, for cashew processing throughput and the broken-kernel fraction. Closes NP-G2.
8. Query the National Statistics Office for mung bean and sesame production. Cheap, and low priority: the conclusion that neither crop can supply an industrial fractionation facility does not depend on the answer. Closes NP-G1.
9. Ask a rice milling association whether Vietnamese bran is separated and heat-stabilised at mill scale, and ask a rice exporter for broken rice volumes, grades and price. Closes CF-G3, NP-G5 and NP-G7.
10. Contact ScaleUp Bio about third-party terms, minimum working volume, downstream recovery fees, tariff treatment for shipping a formulated ingredient back into ASEAN, and whether a halal-segregated run is possible.
11. Contact FiBL, specifically Timo Stadtlander, for the outcome of the 2019 Binca Seafoods duckweed pilot in Vietnam, which was never published. Closes NP-G8.

A free download#

12. Obtain the full text of Risner et al. 2023 on mycoprotein techno-economics and Karamerou et al. 2020 on microbial oil. Both are open access and both were reachable only at abstract level in this study. And read the methods of Karimi et al. 2019, which is the source of the highest substrate figure in this report and which nobody in this project has opened beyond its results table. Closes F-G7.

A student project, or one engineer's afternoon#

13. A chiller duty estimate for a 100 cubic metre airlift fermenter held at 30 to 35 degrees under southern Vietnamese wet-bulb conditions, against a temperate baseline. This is the tropical penalty sitting under every cost argument in this report, and it now has a first desk estimate that nobody has checked. Closes F-G2.
14. A Vietnamese life cycle assessment of mycoprotein using the Vietnamese grid emissions factor, since existing location-sensitive work varies by a factor of three and excludes Vietnam. This is an advocacy and policy output rather than a research priority: it will not change a capital allocation decision. Closes F-G9.
15. A costed comparison of cassava glucose syrup against imported corn glucose at a Vietnamese factory gate. Closes the cost half of F-G5.

Fundable research#

16. A measured DIAAS for a Vietnamese rice and legume blend. Nobody has one, and the industry quotes calculated values as though they were measured.
17. A rice bran protein route that achieves yield and purity together, costed at Vietnamese utility prices. Closes NP-G4.
18. Re-run the methanotroph question, which failed as a tool error rather than returning a negative result, testing specifically whether flammability envelope and hydrogen sulfide loading are the binding constraints. Closes F-G10.
19. Ask a Vietnamese lawyer about Nagoya Protocol and access-and-benefit-sharing obligations for commercialising Vietnamese microbial strains, before any bioprospecting is promoted. Closes CS-G1.